What it's like being a death row lawyer — and watching your clients die

On the last day of his life, Jackie Elliot was allowed visits until noon.

The prisoner had half an hour with a religious adviser before he was strapped to a cruciform table, and intravenous leads were put in his arms.

A sheet of plexiglass separated him from those who would watch what happened next, including his sister and his son, who — after Elliot's legal team raised funds for an airfare — had flown in to Texas for one last visit with his dad.

When, finally, he was asked if he had any last words, Elliot turned to his son and mouthed: "I love you".

"The social science research demonstrates that people who have those views are more likely to believe the prosecution, less likely to believe defendants, not believe in the right to remain silent, [and] to believe police officers reflexively.

"So it's another thumb on the scales."

Closure from death penalty a 'lie'

Working in a system designed to see you fail might render some demoralised, but Mr Bourke says he's privy to powerful acts of humanity, and that's a great gift of the job.

"Some of the most poignant moments I have had have been ... seeing the families of those who've been murdered show the sort of dignity and compassion that the system itself cannot show," he says.

He recalls a client, Chuck, who was accused of murdering three people and nearly killing a fourth.

"One of the people killed was a 17-year-old woman whose last words were, 'Don't shoot me, I'm pregnant'," he says.

It was, he says, "a tremendously terrible crime".

But in the lead-up to trial details emerged, including that Chuck was heavily intoxicated and hallucinating on LSD when he committed the crime. Once clean, he was horrified by what he had done.

"He undertook during his time prior to trial to express that remorse through his reform and through his genuine desire to let the families of those he had killed know that he was sorry for what he had done and he realised the enormity of what he had done," Mr Bourke says.

Upon learning this, several of the victims' families formed the view that Chuck should not be sentenced to death.

This is legally significant, because when someone is found guilty of a capital offence in the US, one of their best chances of not being sentenced to death is if the victim's family tells a courtroom that's not their wish.

"But the last of them, the mother of the pregnant young woman who was killed, was not willing to go that far," Mr Bourke says.

"She felt she owed it to her daughter at that time to seek the most severe penalty."

Mr Bourke and his team offered the mother the chance to talk to Chuck.

After first agreeing only to watch a recording from him, she then said she wanted to meet him, and the two spent an hour together in private conversation.

It had a powerful impact on the woman.

"When she knocked on the door to come out, and he was in there handcuffed to a bench, they opened the door and she gave Chuck a hug and said, 'I'm going to fight for you, Chuck'," Mr Bourke recounts.

"And she did. She came to court on the day of the sentencing.

"She told the district attorney, 'I don't want you to go to trial. I don't want the death penalty. I don't even want him to get life imprisonment. I'm happy with him getting a long term of years'."

Mr Bourke says he was incredibly moved to watch the mother of someone Chuck had killed speaking in support of him.

"I'm not ashamed to say that I had tears streaming down my face sitting in court listening to this woman talk about why it was important to her to forgive him," he says.

"If she, who had suffered so much and continued to suffer so much, if she can do that, if she can show that sort of compassion, it's hard to see why those who are the sponsors of the death penalty in the system can't."

The story illustrates what Mr Bourke says is the fallacy that capital punishment delivers solace to families affected by crime.

"The big lie of the death penalty, and it's one that is propagated by some of these very pro-death prosecutors, is that victims' family members owe it to their loved one to seek the death penalty, that they are letting down their loved one if they don't kill, in their loved one's name, and that the death penalty will give them closure," he says.